The History of Blogging
Last updated: July 13, 2007
The origins of blogging go
further back than the Internet to the days of personal diaries, chronicles and other written
forms of personal musings. Today, a blog is considered to be a Web page that serves as a
publicly accessible personal journal for an individual or company. Blogs
are typically written in chronological order and displayed in reverse
chronological order to the reader. Online media, such as discussion
forums and e-mail lists are also considered to be predecessors to
the blog.The word blog itself is a play on the words Weblog, as most
blogs will be displayed in a journal or log entry format, where most are
updated daily or more frequently than most Web sites would be. Blogs often
reflect the personality of the author or the company employees they
represent. To this end the most accurate and fitting evolution of
today's blog comes from online diaries where the diarist would keep an
online journal of themselves.
Other popular forms of blogging in
business have included updates published by using the finger protocol. This
was a widely popular delivery method for online journals in the mid
1990's — made popular by 3D game developers, such as id
Software and 3DRealms, who used the finger
protocol to provide news and interesting details about in-development
games to their fans.
The Origins of the Word Blog
The Blog Herald
cites the origins of the term weblog to G. Raikundalia & M. Rees, two
lecturers from Bond University on the Gold Coast. The term was first
used in a paper titled "Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic
Meeting Document Analysis and Management." Popular use of the term Weblog as we know it today is from Jorn Barger of the Weblog Robot
Wisdom (robotwisdom.com) in December 1997. Barger coined the term weblog
meaning logging the Web. In 1999 programmer Peter Merholz shortened the term
weblog to blog. Timeline: Notable Blogging Events
| 1994,
January |
Justin Hall a Swarthmore College
student creates what is considered to be the very first blog "Links.net". Some industry trackers cite the first blog as
belonging to David Winer, "Scripting News" (1997). |
| 1997,
December |
Jorn Barger coins the term
Weblog. |
| 1998,
October |
Open Diary is founded. |
|
1999, April |
April: Peter Merholz shortens Weblog to blog. |
|
1999,
July |
The first free weblog tool
launches (Pitas). |
|
1999, August |
Pyra releases Blogger. |
|
2002,
February |
Heather Armstrong is fired
for discussing her job on her blog. The term "Dooced" (see below) is
coined. |
|
2002, August |
Gizmodo launches. |
|
2003,
February |
Google buys Blogger from
Pyra (1 million blogger users, with 200,000 active). |
|
2003, June |
Google launches AdSense and
incorporates matching ads to blog content. |
|
2003, July |
MySpace launches. |
|
2003,
August |
TypePad (blogging and
hosting service) launches. |
|
2004, December |
MSN Spaces launches (which
ties in MSN Messenger and Hotmail services with blogging) |
|
2005, March |
AOL launches its RED Blogs
service, aimed at the teen segment |
|
2005,
July |
News Corp buyst Intermix
Media (owner of Myspace.com) for $580 million. |
|
2005,
October |
AOL buys blog publisher
Weblogs Inc. ($25 million). |
|
2005, August |
TypePad launches TypePad
Mobile (mobile blogging tools). |
|
2005,
November |
Andrew Sullivan moves his
popular blog "Daily Dish" to Time.com. Time gets advertising revenues
from the blog and Sullivan is paid a fee for his services. |
|
2005,
November |
DigitalGrit launches its
Business Blog Service |
|
2006, June |
eBay launches user blogs at
its eBay Live! conference. |
|
2006,
August |
Google pays $900 million in
shared revenue to be the exclusive search provider for MySpace.com
|
Blogs & Blogging Terminology
Like most new technologies, the
blogosphere
(blogging world) is full of new words, terms, and slang used to describe blogs
and the act of blogging. To get you started on knowing the lingo, here are some
of the many blog-related terms you'll find written online today.
blog: Short for
Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal
journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the
personality of the author.
blogger: A person who blogs.
blogging: The act of writing or updating
your blog.
blogosphere:
Meaning all blogs, it is an expression used to describe the 'world of
blogs'.
blogroll:
Found on blogs it is a list of links to other blogs and Web sites that the
blog author commonly references or is affiliated with. Blogrolls help blog
authors to establish and build upon a their blogger community.
blogsnob:
(1) A slang term used to describe a blogger who doesn't respond to blog
comments left by people outside his or her own circle of blogger friends.
(2) Written as BlogSnob, a free advertising exchange for blogs and personal
sites.
b-blog: Short for
business blog, a blog used by a business to promote itself.
klog: Short
for knowledge blog, klog is a type of blog usually used as an internal /
Intranet blog that is not accessible to the general public and that serves
as a knowledge management system. The term klog is also being used to
describe a blog that is technical content oriented.
moblog:
Acronym used to combine the terms "mobile" and "Web log". Where a Web log
(also called a blog) is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible
personal journal for an individual, a moblog is a blog which has been posted
to the Internet from a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA.
tagging:
Commonly used in blogs, site authors attach keyword descriptions (called
tags) to identify images or text within their site as a categories or topic.
Web pages and blogs with identical tags can then be linked together allowing
users to search for similar or related content. If the tags are made public,
online pages that act as a Web-based bookmark service are able to index
them. tags can be created using words, acronyms or numbers. Tags are also
called tagging, blog tagging, folksonomies (short for folks and taxonomy),
or social bookmarking.
Blog and Ping:
An online marketing term applied to a system that utilizes blogs and
pings (short for pingback) to deliver content and /or sites for indexing in
search engines with the ultimate aim of profit. Also called blog ping.
vlog: Short for
video blog, it is the term used to describe a blog that includes or consists
of video clips. Typically updated daily (or with regular frequency) vlogs
often reflect the personality or cause of the author. Also called vog.
"I've Been Dooced!"
Did You Know...
The term dooce means "To lose ones
job (fired) because of something you have posted in a
blog."
Dooce was coined ion 2002 by
Heather Armstrong, a Los Angeles
Web designer who lost her job after writing about work colleagues in
her personal blog, dooce.com. |
Blogging Services
Before blogging services were freely available, bloggers needed at least some
knowledge of HTML and have a place to host their Weblog. In the late 1990s
blogging became very popular, and as a result multiple free blogging software
and services have become available. Free services offer bloggers an easy to use
browser interface to maintain and edit blogs. Users can freely join the
following hosted blog services.
Vangie 'Aurora' Beal -
Writer, www.Webopedia.com
Last updated: July 13, 2007
rebecca's pocket: weblogs: a history and perspective
An overview of some major events that shaped the blogosphere.
Google Blog Search
This Google search enables you to find blogs on your favorite topics.
Yahoo Directory:
Web logs
Web log (blog) related categories and pages from the Yahoo! directory.
Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger
If we can demonstrate that these blogs are worth the cost it takes to
maintain them, we will enable the creation of many more compelling,
useful blogs.
Build
Community With Web Logs
Web Logs have been around for a while in the form of "link lists," but
have really taken off recently as ways of creating community around the
shared interests of the Blog's members. Sort of a cross between a
bulletin board and a link list, Web Logs let people post commentary and
web sites in a sort of shared portal-building/media creating frenzy.
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